Cape Town - Township Tour

New friends in the shebeen
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Published in the Weekend Argus, Travel supplement on 29/30 July

Having lived in Cape Town for many years and being scared to venture into the townships, I decided to do the tourist thing and join a township tour.

Smarties and smilies

We started with the District Six museum, established in 1994 and originally a church, its organ still in place. As a Capetonian, I’d always wondered why the prime land of District Six has been vacant for so long. Originally it was the farm Zonnebloom, then home to a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, labourers and immigrants and named District Six in 1866.

Shebeens in Langa
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On the way to Cape Town’s oldest township, our guide Simphiwe educated us in Xhosa greetings along with its clicks. Humbled having travelled to many countries and learnt basic greetings, but not in my own country.

Langa was established in 1927 when citizens of District Six were removed and presently has a population of 120,000. Parking on a corner lined with shanties, people greeted us with lopsided smiles - shebeens! The first one sold brand named bottled beer but we entered a dingy hut and sat on wooden benches. Our R20-note was exchanged for a tall can of foaming, creamy brew and Siphiwe showed us how to blow away the foam and then sup. We all tasted the cider-like brew from the same container, symbolic of unity from times when white policemen raided shebeens. Outside two men rolled a joint and further along the lane, tall oil-drums over hot coals contained brown beer broth, while children played.

Waiting for the beer to brew - looks like brown porridge!
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Back on the road to another dingy hut, decorated with snakeskin, buck ears, baboon foetus, animal teeth and fur - a traditional healer. The Baptist Church followed, its car park full of luxury vehicles, and inside filled with well-dressed, well-coiffeured audience.

We were on our way to Cape Town’s largest township, passing through the clean, smart suburb of Bonteheuwel, with luxury cars and burglar-proofed homes of Coloureds and Muslims.

Gugulethu is the place of the Seven Memorial, where seven juveniles were accused of being terrorists, followed by an insignificant cross in front of a petrol station - the memorial of Amy Biel.

Rolling a joint outside the shebeen
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Driving towards Khayelitsha and garbage littered roadsides, we avoided cows straying into the roads, and large supermarkets bringing employment to some and death to smarzas. Siphiwe pointed out the ‘smarties’ – multi-coloured Mandela houses, subsidised by overseas gifts.

Khayelitsha (new home) has a population of 1.1 million and growing and where small businesses flourish – cell phones, sheet metal, second-hand tyres, barbers and the township equivalent of fast food where ‘smilies’ or sheep heads, so-called because they smile when cooked in boiling water.

Hair cut in Langa
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The faces of my two Italian companions did not smile when they saw the shacks, until Siphiwe pointed out the well dressed people, well padded, their homes decorated with TV aerials and smart cars on clean streets patrolled by police.

Across the road from Waterfront Shebeen was our final stop, the smallest registered hotel in South Africa with only two rooms. Established in 1998, Vicky’s was the original Township B&B and since then Vicky has encouraged five others to follow. At R200 per person for bed, breakfast and supper, maybe this is the place to book for the World Soccer Cup in 2010.